Re: CVS/SVN comparison

On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 11:11:24 -0400
"David F. Newman" <dnewman@epnet.com> wrote:

> > With your approach there NO difference between TAG and BRANCH. All
> > that is the COPY. One copy, called TAG we _promise_ do not change. And
> > that's why it is a TAG. But nothing can prevent me from modifying this
> > COPY. So, some "bad" developer CAN change the TAG.
>
> One can force a read-only policy on tags by making the /tags directory
> read-only to everyone except the release coordinator using
> mod_authz_svn. Then a bad developer can't change tags.

Then what if someone gets the "release-co-ordinator's" password?

I tend to agree that subversion doesn't support tags. It supports copying, and with a little effort you can make it look like it supports tags. It does not support, out of the box, a cammand like

svn tag or svn tag -rN, which then cannot be altered from within subversion, by anyone.

At least, in my opinion, thats what "tags" mean.

<disclaimers>
1) I know all this in effect is, is putting a specific name on a -rN. Isn't that the idea?
2) Subversion is the first version control system I've ever used. I don't know how it works in other systems, I am simply saying what I think of as tagging for a release, from the point of view of what I will want to do in the future with things in my repo's.
</disclaimers>